Mayday Parade singer reveals musical inspirations

Derek Sanders of Mayday Parade sat down with The State Press before his set and says love is a huge influence behind his music. (Photo courtesy of KJ Mark)

Mayday Parade lead singer Derek Sanders sat down with The State Press to talk about writing the new record and what the band hopes fans will take away from its music.

The State Press: Have you been working on new material on the road?

Derek Sanders: It’s kind of what we always do. We spend so much time touring that between albums we kind of come up with a lot of material on the road. Right now, we’re at the point where we’re about to get together and start bringing all our ideas, and we’ll start writing the next album; so, I’m really excited about it. We’ll start working on all that pretty soon, and I can’t wait for the next album.

SP: What subjects do you normally gravitate towards when you’re writing?

DS: As cheesy as this sounds, I think love is the most inspiring thing. I just think that life and growing up and just relationships, experiences. … I don’t know, it just kind of helps me, like, clarify my thoughts. I don’t know, it’s just fun.

SP: What do you all do when you’re not playing music?

DS: It depends. We’ve been playing a lot of video games on this tour, just because we wound up with two PlayStations on the bus. We also work on music a lot (and) just hang out. I’m reading the first Game of Thrones book. When we’re home … everyone just has off time with family or girlfriends or whatever.

SP: What do you hope your fans take away from your music?

DS: I don’t know that we really think about that too much. Just hope they listen to it with an open mind and give it a chance and if they like it ... and if they don’t, they don’t. I will say, this isn’t really intentional, I guess, but we get a lot of people that tell us that our music has helped them with a hard time, when they’re struggling and that’s really cool. I hope that it can continue to do that and help people. People can hopefully relate to things and realize they’re not alone in what they’re going through. If it can help you in any way, that’s a great thing so hopefully there’s that, too.